THE THIRD AGE TRUST

The University of The Third Age (U3A) is a registered charity that exists to promote the well-being of older people who are no longer in gainful employment. Originally founded in Toulouse, France in 1972 as the Université du Troiseme Age, under the leadership of Pierre Vellas, U3A activities have spread far and wide and branches are now to be found throughout the world. Here in Carrick, where our membership is around 800 members, and still growing, we take our name from the nearby Carrick Roads, a large inland river estuary and natural harbour in Cornwall, between Falmouth and St Mawes.

The Aims of the Third Age Trust:

1. To encourageand enable older people no longer in full-time paid employment to help each other to share their knowledge, skills, interests and experience.

2. To demonstrate the benefits and enjoyment to be gained and the new horizons to be discovered in learning throughout life.

3. To celebrate the capabilities and potential of older people and their value to society.

4. To make Universities of the Third Age (U3As) accessible to all older people.

5. To encourage the establishment of U3As in every part of the country where conditions are suitable and to support and collaborate with them.

The Objectives of the Third Age Trust are to:

1. Provide national support to the Universities of the Third Age in the UK.

2. Provide support and advice to potential new member U3As and seek to start new groups in areas where the U3A movement is under-represented.

3. Raise the profile of the movement both nationally and internationally.

Third Age Trust on the web:

Why not log on to the Trust's website at www.u3a.org.uk where you can find numerous links to U3A Groups and their activities across the United Kingdom and further afield. The site also has a wide range of activities in their Members' section, where you are invited to create an account for yourself by registering a User Name and Password, also listing your U3A Group affiliation. Registration will offer a range of additional services such as regional links, U3A events, shared learning projects, a message board and members' forums, not forgetting the online shop, offering U3A branded goods, publicity materials and handbooks. For chargable items, you may pay by cheque, credit card or PayPal, or have goods shipped with invoice.

Resource Centre:

Whilst you are logged into the Members' section, a further link allows Group Leaders to sign up to the U3A Resource Centre, with its extensive catalogue of materials, available on loan to support group activities. They have an online catalogue which may be consulted, once you are registered, from which items may be selected and reserved.

Elizabeth Gibson runs this very efficient and helful at the Third Age Trust offices in Bromley, Kent. They hold an extensive list of DVDs, CDs, videos and slides that may be lent out to Group Leaders in individual U3As. These include such subjects as Philosophy, History, Science, Gardening and Music. U3A Carrick has used these resouces to good effect over past months. Contact Elizabeth to request a list from the Third Age Trust. Materials arrive by post and may be used for three weeks. The only expense is the cost of return postage.

Online access via www.u3a.org.uk/the-resource-centre If Group Leaders want to use this service and wish to know more about it, would they contact Tony Herring on (01872) 273678

 

An periodic update from Ian Searle:
 
As reported in the September Newsletter, I survived the challenge at the AGM of the Third Age Trust in Nottingham and was re-elected for my third year as Chairman. This is actually a record in that while other Chairmen of the Trust have indeed remained in office for three years, and some had to beat a rival to the post, never before has anyone stood against the Chairman in the course of his or her three-year term. I am therefore the only one in 29 years to have been elected to the post twice. Full reports of the AGM and of the excellent Conference will be carried in the October issue of U3A News which will be 92 pages long - I still think it a remarkable bargain for members who receive it direct by post four times a year at 40p a time. If you are one of those who doesn't, take a look at what you are missing.

To our great relief someone came forward at the Conference to offer her services as Honorary Treasurer. Since she was promptly co-opted (she has a track record which is impressive), she will officially be Acting Treasurer until she can be formally elected next year, always assuming she is willing to continue then. So our National Executive Committee is now complete again, although one of the new trustees has been incapacitated with an injured back for some time and it will be good to welcome her to our meetings.

The NEC has already held one meeting and a second will follow in under two weeks. We have agreed a reorganisation of our sub-committees to promote more efficient working on democratic lines. There were several things to be considered, hinted at in my Chairman's Report at Nottingham. The first of these is to be an increased emphasis on support for group leaders especially. We have a number of ideas about how to achieve that. I want to see consultations and workshops all round the UK in which we discuss the ways in which we already try to help and to find perhaps new means of supporting the most important people in any U3A. We shall also want to continue our support for the various officers in U3As. The support we have over recent years given to Networks and Regions will continue, so that all U3As can benefit from the exchange of information that follows. The trustees at our first meeting all welcomed my plans to continue our connections with U3As in other parts of the world, so that we may continue to look outwards rather than inwards.

2012 is not only the year of the London Olympics, it is also the 30th Anniversary year for the Third Age Trust and we are thinking hard of how to encourage celebratory programmes. internationally, it is also the year to promote Active Ageing. Perhaps you need to stock up on Weetabix or Shredded Wheat to ensure you have enough energy to deal with next year's activities!   We have no wish in the Trust to direct, manage, dominate, push or even to give the impression that we are in some way the equivalent of a boss, while the U3As are the workers. Instead, the Trust is there to support U3As in as many ways as it can. Often that consists of advice but the advice is not simply something we ourselves dream up in the hope it might be useful; it is gleaned from other U3A members and/or from authorities which administer the rules, such as the Charity Commissioners. We bring it to everyone's attention.

Whilst the most inspiring speech of the Conference was by Eric Midwinter, one of the three founders of the movement, perhaps the most encouraging part of this year's National Conference was an address given by Professor John Benyon. Both speeches will, I am sure, be fully reported in U3A News and eventually be made available to U3As either in printed form or maybe on a CD. Between them, these speakers gave an all-round summing up of the state of thinking in academic and political circles about older people in society and the way in which informal adult education in particular is of benefit. In case you are sceptical about the term 'informal adult education', it encompasses all the activities we do in the U3A, from croquet to table tennis, from bridge to philosophy. www.u3a.org.uk

Ian Searle
October 8, 2011